


Let it Go

by DearLazerBunny



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, Avengers Family, Background Relationships, Drug Abuse, Drug Withdrawal, F/M, Gen, I DON'T WANT TO TRIGGER ANYONE, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Post-Avengers (2012), Reader-Insert, Self-Hatred, Suicide Attempt, background/mild loki x reader, please heed the warnings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:54:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26889181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DearLazerBunny/pseuds/DearLazerBunny
Summary: *not far enough into this one to give an accurate description, so this will be updated later. for now, enjoy.*WARNING: there will be an (unsuccessful) suicide attempt by reader- chapter will be explicitly marked in advance. Drug (pills) and alcohol abuse, lots of negativity and self loathing. There will be an arc, but said arc is going to start in the eleventh circle of hell and inch up from there.
Relationships: Avengers Team & Original Female Character(s), Loki (Marvel)/Original Female Character(s), Loki (Marvel)/Reader, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 71





	1. Chapter 1

If I see another ad for _Frozen_ , I might go homicidal.

I pass at least five of them as I work through rush-hour Manhattan at a snail’s pace. _Smash Hit! Instant Classic! #1 Movie in the World!_ Awesome. Fantastic. Happy for you, Disney. Now please, dear god, get it the fuck out of my face.

I jerk away from narrowly shoulder-checking a businessman hustling down the sidewalk, speaking rapid-fire into the phone glued to his ear. It’s like a very, very fucked up dream; everyone in the world is in on the joke, and I just didn’t get the invite. Maybe they were spying on me. Sure, it could’ve been inspired by a fairytale, but who knows? I could sue. Demand fifty percent of the profits for copyright infringement. That’d be more than enough to set me up with a cabin in Alaska, somewhere all I’d have to worry about is making friends with the polar bears.

On the subway, I notice someone has _Let it Go_ blaring from their earbuds. No less than three little girls are wearing something blue and covered in glitter. One has a cheap blonde plait clipped into her hair, accented by a snowflake charm dangling from the end. I suppress the urge to rip it off her head.

It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, I want to say. It’s not Disney-dreamy like the mouse has made it out to be, living in a palace and making magical snowmen and singing power ballads about self-acceptance and overcoming your demons. In the real world, you quell those demons with a fistful of benzodiazepines, because if you don’t, something like a car alarm or a slammed door will make spikes of ice splinter through the floor around you. It’s constantly wearing three hoodies at a time, so that way if a stranger on the seat next to you brushes your arm, they don’t immediately get third-degree frostbite. It’s getting a papercut and watching the blood freeze on the tip of your finger, then melt back to liquid when you break it off and toss it away. It’s getting hospitalized when an inner-city charity doctor takes your temperature before you can object and your body temperature is barely higher than freezing, so they pump you full of warm saline and cover you in foil blankets and all that heat makes you _sick,_ so you have to rip the IV out of your arm and walk yourself back to your apartment in your hospital gown while dodging orderlies and strange looks from passerby at 2 AM.

The kid and her parents get off at the next stop. The subway clicks along. I try to make myself smaller as the car fills up with more people. 

Maybe if they’d had Xanax in Arendelle, Elsa wouldn’t have had to deal with all that “conceal, don’t feel” bullshit. She wouldn’t be able to feel anything with all the pills and booze she’d be mainlining. Take it from me, babe, it’s a lot easier to drug those demons away. Much more effective than a song.

Something in me feels a weird flare of pride for handling this… whatever the hell it is better than a fictional cartoon princess. Then I want to laugh, because goddamn, my life is pathetic.

My meeting spot is in a back alley near Bryant Park. Some NYU kid is pawning his Klonopin for party cash, I guess. I think if you’re rich enough to be a frat boy at NYU you probably don’t need the extra fifty from your prescriptions, but whatever. I don’t have a ton of other avenues at this point.

I scan the neon bottle, then shake it open and count the pills inside. “These are only a half milligram? Fifteen.”

“Dude, we said forty.”

“Yeah, for a milligram pill. These will barely last me a week.”

“Twenty.”

“Fine.”

I don’t think the universe agrees with my choices.

The sky splits open with a shriek that balances the world on the edge of a knife. One heartbeat. Two. He and I both look up at the clear blue, unsure. Between the skyline, I see something- some _things-_ begin pouring from a split in the universe, ugly and black and hungry.

I wrench the bottle from the kid’s hands and run.

 _Run, run, run, don’t look up, don’t look back, oh jesus what the FUCK IS THIS-_ Midtown is a nightmare. Not from Friday traffic this time. People are scrambling, screaming and crying, trying to flee the scene. An entire side of a building gets shaved off and falls to the ground like an iceberg. A gas line broke somewhere because everything is hazy with fumes and starts shimmering rainbow colors. I round a corner, cursing and trying to keep my ratty converse on my feet as I dodge rubble and ash- _don’t look up don’t look up don’t look up._ I can see my breath starting to crystallize around me as my anxiety spikes, and I try to force it down. _Don’t think about it._ Now is so not the time for that.

In the middle of the street, six brightly clad superheroes stand with grim but determined looks on their faces. There’s Tony Stark in his mechanical suit, Captain America brandishing his shield. The star stands out like a beacon in the smoke. Cool, coolcoolcool, they’ve got this, right? They’ve totally got this. Everything is going to be fine. Everything is going to _befineohholyshitthat’sabigalien-_

I try to use an overturned car as cover. Dart to one, breathe, press my back to steel and try to shake my body back from shock, wait for a moment of silence between the chaos- run to the next pile of rubble. My footprints are outlined in frost on the cracked pavement, clean white against the ash raining from the sky. As I slam myself up against another car, heaving, I have a prime few of Captain-freaking-America bashing three ugly aliens in the face with his shield, battering them to the ground. He stops for a moment to flex his fingers, wipe some of the grime from his face.

He doesn’t see the alien rushing him from behind, mouth open and yawning in some sort of hideous grin, poised to shove a glowing blue gun against the Captain’s muscly back.

I don’t think. My feet move without my telling them to. I can taste the ash as I dart to the middle of the street, as close as I dare. The air around me is impossibly frigid. I’m not controlling anything at this point, but I can deal with that later. Hopefully.

 _“DUCK!”_ I scream as loud as I possibly can over the sound of metal and roaring monsters.

His eyes snap up to meet mine. He heard me, somehow, and then he actually heeds a random girl standing amidst the carnage and hits the deck so fast I can hear the whiplash. It’s hot enough to make my skin boil, but if I stretch my hand out and pull, I can feel something begin to crystallize in my waiting palm-

Fissures crack open in the concrete beneath me. In my hand, a thin lance of ice extends to a deadly point, too weighty for its slim frame, and while I should have all the grace and skill of an alcoholic drug addict, my aim is good enough that the alien now has an unforgiving pole of ice sticking through its breastbone. Frost creeps from the hole in its chest, discoloring its sickly black armor to a grey tint. For a moment, it's suspended in time, unmoving- then gravity takes hold and with one last nightmarish shriek it crumples to the ground in a heap.

Huh. Whaddya know. I flex my fingers, breathing hard. _Take that, Elsa._ Screw the power of love, I just single-handedly saved a national icon.

Said icon is picking himself up off the ground, a new layer of dust coating the front of his uniform. He looks behind him, at the ugly corpse and the ice that inexplicably hasn’t started to melt in the city’s heat. Then his eyes are on me, hard and curious.

Oh. Fuck.

Instinctively, I pull my hood up further over my head, hopefully obscuring more of my face than before. What did he see? Could he memorize my face? He knows I’m a freak show, that’s for sure. _Fuck._ My brain kicks in and I run, skidding over broken pavement and letting the sheer terror of a crumbling New York fuel my steps. Either we’ll all be dead by the end of this, or the strange girl with ice coming from her hands will be little more than a hazy memory after all this is said and done. I hope. _Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it-_ cold prickles on the back of my neck and pushes me back towards being just another face in the crowd.

There are over a dozen police blockades to try and control the battlefield, and between them and the rubble raining from the heavens, it takes me what feels like hours to crawl back to my underside of the city. It’s punctuated by the grinding of metal and shattering of glass and sickening cracks of lightning from Midtown, making me flinch and wring my hands deep into my sweatshirts to keep them busy with something other than frosting the ground over. _Don’t think about it._

I shove my shoulder into the door, forcing it open, then close it the same way from the opposite side. I flick the locks closed, secure the ball and chains. Each one is encased in frost by the time I’m done, and the doorjamb is clogged with ice. I’m suddenly irrationally thankful that there’s only one window in the apartment. It’s a stupid comfort- those things were leveling skyscrapers, a ratty building like this would be flattened in an instant-

I wrench open the nearest drawer, sending the contents rolling. Bottles clack against each other; pills rattling against the plastic. It’s the most comforting thing I’ve heard all day. I pull one out at random, pop the lid, down it dry. In the back of my mind, the large green monster roars. I shudder and swallow another, this time chasing it with swigs from the obscenely large bottle of booze on the desk. It burns all the way down in the best way, chasing the little orange tablets and promising the sweet release of nothing. 

That should last a day. Maybe more. I fall into the bed, already feeling the combo tug at my system, making me heavy and slow. Maybe Manhattan will still be standing when I wake up. Or better yet, Manhattan will still be standing, but I won’t. I’ve never been that lucky, but it never hurts to hope.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *not far enough into this one to give an accurate description, so this will be updated later. for now, enjoy.*
> 
> WARNING: there will be an (unsuccessful) suicide attempt by reader- chapter will be explicitly marked in advance. Drug (pills) and alcohol abuse, lots of negativity and self loathing. There will be an arc, but said arc is going to start in the eleventh circle of hell and inch up from there.

He had just gotten used to the noise.

When he first woke up, it felt like he was suffocating him- always there, always cars honking and lights flashing and music playing and people going about their lives- the city that never sleeps. Someone told him that, he forgets who. He figured out what they meant the second he stepped outside for longer than a minute.

Now there’s just the wind stirring up dust, and occasionally toppling over a loose pile of debris. City workers push brooms along the street, trying to clear a path. Machines groan and creak as they haul away pieces of the city- days ago, that window was hundreds of feet in the sky- like its nothing. Another day. Just a little quieter than usual.

It’s hard to believe, even though he has the scars on his shield and healing bruises on his ribs to prove the aliens did, in fact, try to invade New York and take over the planet. Led by a god. And then he’d teamed up with another god- he still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He’d never been particularly religious, but Bucky was- the insufferable bastard Stark, two assassins and a green giant and became an Avenger of planet Earth.

This wasn’t what he signed up for in 1941. Nazis or aliens, punching them in the face still uses the same muscles. Metal torsos don’t have quite as much give against the knuckles though. 

He wanders the streets with no real purpose in mind, other than helping out with lifting here and there where needed. The war roars to life in the back of his mind, overlayed with the eerily calm day. His eyes mark the battle: here, where he launched Nat into the air, her dry words echoing in his ears; here, where Thor had very efficiently covered his back. Here, where for the second time in his life he watched a man who didn’t deserve to fall hurdle towards the ground.

And here- something happened here. His feet remember even if his mind doesn’t- they’ve stopped in the middle of the road. He squints, resisting the urge to cough on a cloud of dust that gets kicked up in his face. Something… his shield, doing far greater damage than his fist ever could, and then someone… screamed?

Her. A girl, in the middle of the road, eyes sunken and skin so taught and paperwhite he’d wondered if the ghosts of this battle were already coming to haunt him before it was even done. She’s screamed at him to duck, and her voice was so raw it triggered something in the back of his brain from basic training and caused him to hit the ground before he fully knew what he was doing. Something had flown over his head- he could hear it cutting through the air- a thunk, a screech that would likely be added to his rotating litany of nightmares- then nothing, save the battle raging behind him. A Chitauri he assumed he’d missed lay twitching on the ground just inches from his neck, and sticking from its chest- ice. Solid ice. So cold that his gloved hand still recoiled when he reached out to touch it.

The irony wasn’t lost on him.

The girl’s face had been a roulette of emotions- a hint of pride, a darkly sarcastic flicker of her lips, and then her eyes widened and- fear. He watched her watch him, clenching and unclenching her fists. By the time he had opened his mouth to call out to her, she was gone, leaving only a trail of what looked to be frost on the ground before she disappeared around a corner- and something that slipped out of her pocket, jostled from her sweatshirt as she made her getaway.

He didn’t have time to think about her after that. A second later, his comm had crackled to life in his ear, and Stark started barking instructions, and Captain America had straightened his spine and grabbed his shield, and got back to where he was needed.

Steve Rogers, though, still has her tucked in the back of his mind.

The frost is still on the ground. Not as white as it had been, but a few grains of ice still cling to the cracks in the pavement. Strange. Magic? After everything he’s seen the past few days he wouldn’t be surprised. He follows the trail, irrationally hoping she’ll still be tucked behind an overturned car or crumbling building corner.

She isn’t. But there is a neon orange bottle tucked amongst the wreckage, and as he reaches for it he has a flash of memory of it falling from your pocket as you run. The contents rattle. A prescription bottle- like the ones medical gives him never get touched and sit collecting dust in a corner of his closet. Neat rows of print declare it _Klonopin, 0.5 mg. Take once a day at bedtime, take an additional half as needed. Ingest with food._ In the upper left corner is a name and address and phone number- _Christian Heysworth._

The girl in the sweatshirt doesn’t strike him as a Christian. He should probably drop the bottle- it’d never be noticed among the rest of the chaos- and walk away. Worry about his own life and his own mess.

He tucks the bottle into his pocket. It might be a place to start.

…

The knock on her door is crisp and succinct, with no room for error. A soldier’s knock. She knows who it is before she turns the lock, because Clint doesn’t bother knocking anymore. When the door opens, she tries not to look as tired as she feels. “Captain.” It’s an easy acknowledgment, and it gives him time to categorize the healing gash on her cheekbone, covered with a butterfly bandage; the bruise blossoming on her collarbone that peeks just far enough above the neckline of her shirt to be seen. She doesn’t need the attention, but he needs a reminder that not everything is different since the forties. Same soldiers, different decade. Despite herself, the corner of her lip flicks up in the tiniest hint of appreciation. It has been a while since someone’s cared. “What can I do for you?”

“I need a favor.”

Interesting. “With?”

“Something stupid, most likely,” His voice is just sheepish enough to believe him. From his pocket, he pulls an orange bottle identical to the ones SHIELD’s psych department keeps prescribing her and the ones she keeps using for target practice.

Oh. Something deep in her chest softens and clenches all at once. She knows these questions all too well. “Cap. If you need help with- well. I can try my best, but I doubt I’m the best person to-”

Steve’s eyes widen. “Oh, no, these- they aren’t mine.” He hands the medicine over and she appraises it with a practiced eye. _Klonopin, schedule IV drug in the United States, dose as low as one milligram to sedate an average adult male within forty-five minutes, effects greatly compounded by alcohol-_ “I, um. I’d like to track down the owner.”

Her brain is humming. “Any particular reason?”

“It’s a long story.”

Wordlessly, she steps aside, letting him in. “I didn’t have much to do tonight.”

Eventually, there are cups of tea in front of both of them, though she’s only taken a sip and Steve hasn’t touched his at all. He tells her about the girl who leaves frost on the ground in the middle of Manhattan and saves him with a spear made of ice. From the way he speaks, its almost like he isn’t quite sure if she was real or not- just a ghost or a very strange guardian angel. It’s bizarre, but not even on her top ten list of bizarre things in this week alone.

“So. I want to… thank her, I suppose?” He laughs without mirth. “I’m not really sure.”

“Think she’s enhanced?”

“Hopefully not by force.”

It doesn’t even bother her, anymore, the implication. Her breathing becomes more controlled on instinct. _In through the nose, out through the mouth. Don’t think about it._ “Let’s hope. Is she on anyone’s radar? SHIELD?”

“I wouldn’t even know how to check. And if I did, I don’t have anything to go on.”

Natasha glances down at the bottle of pills. But there is Christian Heysworth. She reaches under the couch cushion she sits on to produce a laptop from the gap. It’s wafer-thin and high tech enough that pulling up something as inane as Facebook looks categorically ridiculous. There’s a few Christian Heysworths, but they’re quickly narrowed down by what little information she has. “Christian Heysworth: junior at NYU, frat boy, wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got a couple of DUIs under his belt paid off by someone in his family-” she glances up, sharp cheekbones illuminated in blue light. “What?”

“I just… what are the odds he’d be in SHIELD’s databases…?”

“Hardly, Cap. Behold the wonders of the internet. So, are we wringing his neck, or were you thinking something more subtle?”

She says it to get a rise out of him and is rewarded by an aghast expression. “I just need to ask him some _questions,_ Natasha, not-” he stops when her quiet smirk lifts a little of the weight from her eyes and laughs with her. “Fine. But I’m doing the talking.”

...

Natasha Romanov has infiltrated thirty-seven countries in as many or more disguises and has never been caught. She is failing miserably at attempting to camouflage Captain America into a generic civilian. There aren’t enough sunglasses and baseball caps in the world to make him a more manageable height and physique, and his t-shirt- at least two sizes too small for him- attracts the eyes of every wannabe pro sports player and every girl and guy hanging off of their arm. Honestly, they expect her to work in these kinds of conditions? Thankfully pulling her top a little lower and batting her eyelashes nets her enough information to direct her to her “absolutely _earth-shattering_ one-night stand.” They climb stairs in a dorm hall that could be nicer than some of the floors in Stark Tower. She has the urge to crack the tile with something sharp.

Heysworth opens his door in boxers and smoke still on his breath. Heavy-lidded eyes barely focus on her face. “Uh, hey. Can I help you?”

Steve comes up behind her. “Christian Heysworth? I’d like to have a word with you, son.”

“I didn’t do nothin’.”

“I didn’t say you did.” Steve’s blue eyes are cool when he takes off his aviators; primly folds them and hangs them on the collar of his shirt. “Recognize this?” He holds out the prescription.

“Uh, I didn’t really-” Heysworth stops. Belches. Squints up at Steve. “I- wait. Wait, holy shit, you’re fucking Captain America! Holy shit man, I can’t even-”

As he rambles, Steve looks over to Natasha, who shrugs. “You must have one of those faces.”

Captain America holds up a hand to the kid’s face. “Just answer the question, son.”

“I, yeah, okay, um-” he turns the bottle over in his hands. “Shit, is this what that bitch stole from me?”

“Language. Who stole from you?”

“I met up with some chick downtown who wanted to buy them, but then those freaking aliens started coming and I- you didn’t hear it from me though, ‘kay?”

Steve sighs. “Do you know her name?”

“Nah, chat rooms and shi- stuff. Sorry. I have her screen name?”

He agrees to trade for a selfie with the Captain, which Natasha promptly deletes as soon as he hands over his phone, transferring data to her own. “She’s communicating from this address,” she murmurs, showing Steve the area it triangulated before wiping that information too. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Uh-huh. Hey, are you-”

Steve neatly closes the door in his face. “I don’t think he looked at your face once.”  
  


 _Oh, Steve._ What a pure soul. “To be fair, I don’t think anyone has been looking at yours either.”

Their trail leads them to the backstreets, to an alley so covered in grime it looks like the whole place should be condemned. And many of the buildings are- covered in caution tape, stairwells crumbling, and fire escapes rusted over. Wind whistles through shattered windows. Foundations are rotting. And yet there are a few minuscule signs of life- a door that’s scraped the ground so many times there’s wear on the concrete, a few piles of garbage here and there. “She’s off the grid.”

“Can’t be right. She was a kid, couldn’t have been more than twenty-”

“You do what you have to.” She gives him a look. “You know that.”

His face goes stony. “Let’s just find her.”

Natasha sets off in one direction, Steve in the other. They both know how this works. It’s a practiced dance. Search the bottom floors first, find faults in the buildings and stairwells so you can avoid them the next floor up. She picks a lock that has managed to stay fast despite rusting over, he leverages himself through a windowsill strong enough to hold his weight. Eerily silent save for scraps of trash and the skittering of mice. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the construction in midtown, slowly shoveling away.

Steve’s mark is almost laughably easy to find. There’s a door tucked in a second-level corner whose seams are iced over three inches thick.

Her boots crunch in frost spilling out from under a crack in the door. She punctures the air with a bird call, and seconds later Steve rounds the corner. He reaches down to run a finger through the snow. “it looks the same.”

“Do you want to do the honors then?” He tests the knob once, twice- the metal doesn’t even rattle, it’s too frozen solid. He opts to kick it in with a well-placed boot, wincing at the sound of ice cracking and then shattering into shards.

The apartment is empty. There’s a table along the far wall stacked with a few cardboard boxes to use as makeshift shelves. Packets of potato chips are shoved in one alcove, a few granola bars in the other. Empty soda bottles litter the floor. The table itself is mostly covered with alcohol: a whole skyline of glass bottles glinting in the light from the newly busted door. Some are empty, some are half full, a few have broken necks. An inspection of the crooked drawers attached underneath reveals nothing but a junkyard of pills, none of which are prescribed to the same person more than twice.

Natasha opens a few of the safety caps, rattling them like a scientist with an interest. “There’s enough in here to put even you to sleep.”

“Is she here? She would’ve heard the door.”

“Maybe.” A door leads off to a molding bathroom and a small hall closet. The next, a makeshift bedroom. A grimy mattress sits in the corner, covered in blankets so dirty there’s no telling what the print of them might’ve once been. There’s also a girl. She’s curled up in the center, drowning in layers of hoodies and sweatshirts. The second Natasha steps in the room she can see her breath. Another step in and the air feels like home. Whatever water was in the air has crystallized and fallen to the ground in a tiny hailstorm, surrounding her like a halo.

She also doesn’t move.

The spy moves with ruthless efficiency, ignoring the cold as she kneels by the mattress. _Too many layers. Can’t even see if she’s breathing._ She tugs her sleeve up over her fingertips before beginning to shove aside tangled hoods and t-shirts, digging for the collarbone.

“Natasha?”

“Here. She’s almost-” she cuts off with a hiss of pain, wrenching her fingers back like she was bit.

“What-?” the girl is still sleeping. Steve only spares her a glance before taking Natasha’s hand in his, checking for damage. There’s no blood, no broken skin. But the tips of her fingers are white and hard, paler than normal and cold to the touch. He recoils on instinct. “Frostbite.”

Natasha is muttering low in Russian, tapping her fingers together to move the blood, and Steve is momentarily taken back to a plane going down in the middle of an endless ocean surrounded by walls of blue. No going back, only going under, and nothing waiting for him but frost and ice and _cold-_

“Steve!” He blinks. Natasha’s face swims back into focus. “Get out. Contact the tower. We can’t move her like this and she needed medical yesterday.”

“I’m fi-”

“No, you’re not. I can handle this. Russian, remember?” She tries to give him a small smile. He doesn’t return it. “Get out and coordinate removal. That’s an order.”

Orders, some primeval part of Steve’s brain can understand. He turns and hopes he doesn’t run from the apartment, not even bothering to navigate the stairs- just jumps over the balcony to land in the courtyard below, chest heaving. Unconsciously, he glances in a nearby piece of glass, ensuring his breath isn’t fog. He isn’t cold. He isn’t. He’s fine.

He isn’t thinking when he puts a beacon out for JARVIS to trace. He isn’t flexing his fingers to make sure they can move. He isn’t drowning. He isn’t on ice. He isn’t, he isn’t, he _isn’t-_

In the apartment, Natasha swears and wrings her hand as pins and needles race down her arm. She’s handled plenty of frostbite, but it never gets easier. The girl is still unconscious, heartbeat dangerously slow. Whatever she put in her system, she meant to knock herself out for a long time. Or worse.

And Steve is on the verge of a panic attack and if your heart stops she can’t perform CPR, so she sits on the edge of your mattress blowing on her fingers as you keep causing the air around you to quietly freeze and fall, a tiny secret twinkle of ice in the middle of New York.


End file.
